David Cameron’s courage in pushing for same-sex marriage deserves credit. As we report today, next week he will announce that a Bill will not only seek to legalise gay marriage but allow it to take place in churches and other religious buildings.

This has been a significant point of controversy between believers who want the right to celebrate same-sex marriages in church, such as Quakers, and conservative religious groups that reject any such idea. The Church of England too has warned that such a move could weaken its status as the established Church.

Such objections are exaggerated. The legislation will not compel any church or religious functionary to perform gay marriages. But just as the law should respect clergy’s wishes not to perform such marriages if they do not wish to, so it must also must also respect the desire of gay believers to be married within their own religious community.

Like the legislation for civil partnerships before it, same-sex marriage is a reform whose time has come: a change in the law will be in tune with society’s attitudes on the issue. There will inevitably be those with more traditional views who disagree. Yet no one is forcing them to perform or attend gay marriages (much less to enter into them). As with civil partnerships, in all likelihood once the law is changed, most people will wonder what all the fuss was about. But it will at last give gays and lesbians a fundamental right long denied to them, if they choose to embrace it. And this paper believes that in so doing, the new law will ultimately not damage the institution of marriage, but strengthen it.

London transformed

In the midst of his grim Autumn Statement, Chancellor George Osborne had some good news for London. The Northern line extension to Battersea, a key component of the Nine Elms redevelopment, will get a government guarantee for a £1 billion loan at a preferential rate to enable the Mayor to fund it. With hundreds of millions of pounds contributed by developers, this will eventually deliver two new Tube stations, at Battersea Power Station and Wandsworth Road. Meanwhile new funding for major road projects includes upgrades of the A13 and M25 in Essex to support the London Gateway port at Shellhaven.

This paper has long argued for more funding for infrastructure. Though such big projects take time, they will deliver a much-needed economic boost to the construction industry, as well as helping create tens of thousands of jobs. Perhaps more important, though, projects like the Northern line extension, opening up the largest undeveloped area in central London, are an investment in the capital’s future prosperity. In hard times more than ever, we need such ambition.

Fleecing commuters

London commuters have known for a while that rail fares will jump in January by an average 3.9 per cent — but it emerges that the rises on some routes are shocking. Because operators are allowed to juggle fare rises around the average, some peak fares will increase by up to six per cent. An annual season ticket from Tonbridge will rise by 5.2 per cent. Ministers’ determination to pile more of the cost of rail on to passengers via these above-inflation increases makes their hard-times slogan of “we’re all in this together” sound pretty thin. And they are hard to justify economically: these rises are a tax on London — the only place in the country creating significant numbers of jobs.